


The Ritual

by Cybra



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Heavy Drinking, Infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 13:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14895674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cybra/pseuds/Cybra
Summary: Scrooge always retreats to the empty Bin on days like Father's Day to give him privacy for a rather twisted ritual of his.





	The Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> I have a terrible headcanon that one reason Scrooge didn’t have kids was due to sterility. Pulling in some stuff from _Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck_ to help flesh out Scrooge’s past until the show reveals something. Originally, I had an entire page with Donald and the boys at the beginning, but given the tone of where the story ultimately went, I had to cut it though I saved it for possible future use somewhere. I liked it too much to simply lose to the ether.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** _Ducktales_ belongs to the Walt Disney Company. _The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck_ was written and drawn by Don Rosa.

The sky had still been dark when Scrooge reached the Money Bin, him having decided to make the long trip from Killmotor Hill on foot rather than rousing Launchpad to drive him.  The Bin was closed on Sundays; everyone knew that.  However, it wasn’t because of tradition or religious reasons but because this way he had somewhere to go when he needed absolute privacy without raising suspicion.  So as soon as the clock had struck midnight, Scrooge had started walking.

His feet ached as he got into the elevator, but it was a good sort of ache.  At the very least, it served as a distraction to keep himself from fully succumbing to that despairing silence that occupied so much of his mind.

He worked on paperwork until an hour or two after the sun had decided to rise.  Yet despite getting so far ahead for the week, it failed to accomplish what he’d been trying to do: to fully distract himself from the sadness this day always produced in him.  Work had always been his drug of choice to numb emotional pain, letting him shove his personal problems to the back of his mind that by now was likely a less hospitable quagmire than Dismal Downs itself.  If he was busy making money, that sense of accomplishment helped drown out some of his personal issues.

But today work wasn’t enough.  It never was on days like Father’s Day.  Only the ritual would give him a few hours of…well, not _peace_ but the ability to alter reality in his own head.  With a sigh, he unlocked the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of his desk to stare into a small cache of things he didn’t want to see on a regular basis but he needed on hand for the ritual.

The first was a cracked old photo album that had certainly seen better days.  He set it on his desk off to one side, not opening it.  It wasn’t time for that yet.

Beneath the album was a manila folder with his name written in a doctor’s near-inscrutable handwriting.  He hesitated, swallowing, before retrieving it.  He set it down in the middle of his desk to be dealt with momentarily.

There was another moment of hesitation as his hand dived once again into the drawer to lift up the false bottom.  He stared down into the contents of the hidden cache, hating the shining non-descript bottles he kept hidden away for just such a day.  He retrieved three of them, set them on his desk directly beside the folder, started to replace the false bottom, thought better of it, and retrieved a fourth bottle before putting the false bottom back.  The bottles had no labels on them for Scrooge had removed those before bringing them to the Bin so that no one could identify what they had contained if anyone found the empty containers after he disposed of them.  (He was glad for the deep pockets of his clothing:  It made it easier to smuggle in these bottles one at a time.)  Twisting off the cap of the first, the smell of something like paint thinner filled the air before Scrooge took a few deep fortifying swallows.

As a man who didn’t drink often, the effects of the alcohol hit hard.  It didn’t hurt that the swill he was drinking was little more than rotgut, the brew containing as much alcohol as was legally allowed, and he was drinking on an empty stomach to boot.  He’d stayed perfectly sober during all the hard times he’d been trying to scrape together a fortune and through most of the hard times in his life.  Heavy drinking was an expensive habit, and he could put that money towards something more productive.  The ritual was a tradition for him that went back almost three decades and had become the exception to his self-set rule.  After all, he wasn’t going to be getting anything done _anyway_ and nobody was around to interrupt him, so he might as well just drink himself stupid as he’d seen so many others do while growing up.  If anything, it gave him a twisted sort of pleasure that _something_ about him was what others would consider normal.

He came up for air when the bottle was about half empty, his mind feeling as if it were drowning in syrup.  With full knowledge that it wouldn’t be enough to deaden the impact, Scrooge set the bottle aside and opened the folder.

The medical report was a bit blurry due to the “beer goggle” effect of the alcohol, but Scrooge didn’t need to read it: He’d memorized the words long ago.  He couldn’t say exactly what they _meant_ though he’d had plenty of time to look up the exact tests that had been run, but he was only interested in the results.  Perhaps some part of him thought that if he got drunk enough, the results would change and everything would be fine when he sobered up.

_“I’m sorry, Mr. McDuck.  The results came back, and I’m afraid that they aren’t good.”_

_“What’s wrong with me?  Can it be fixed?”_

_“I don’t think so given the nature of the…damage.  Your sperm count is low—which could potentially be fixed via drugs or surgery—but unfortunately there’s nothing that can be done about their lack of genetic material.”_

_“…No.  No, there’s got to be something.  What sort of research is going into this?  I’ll fully fund it from my own pocket if necessary!”_

_“Mr. McDuck, there’s nothing that can be done.  Based on what you told me of your background and some basic research on my part, it’s possible that during your mining days you were exposed to enough radiation to cause permanent damage but without you getting sick.  The Australian outback in particular has areas high in uranium content.  Though given the nature of the issue…it’s more likely that you may have been born—”_

_“I have to go.  Thank you for your time and for the offer to help with my previous request.”_

_“Sir, perhaps I should call someone for you to talk to?  I know a few psychologists who have extensive experience—”_

_“I have work to do.  Thank you for your time, Doctor.”_

Even as drunk as he already was, the results didn’t magically morph even in his own compromised brain to being positive.  The tests still showed nothing but bad news.  He shoved the report back into the folder and hastily downed the rest of that first bottle.

He took his time with the second as he set the folder aside and he flipped through the album.  The images of his family from happier times—a two-decade-long gap between the earlier and later pictures—ended halfway through the book.  His inebriated fantasies filled the remaining empty pages with pictures of himself with children, grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren.  There was no wife by his side, of course, given he would’ve hired a surrogate to get the job done.  (No woman would ever marry Scrooge for anything but his money so why not simply hire someone to carry his children for as long as necessary before they parted ways?  Less messy and it would’ve had the same results in the end.)  In the phantom images, he cradled newborns that didn’t exist.  He saw birthdays and holidays that never happened, trips never taken.  In the world where the pictures were real, he’d fallen in the ranks of the wealthy because he’d had something outside of work to live for, but he’d been so happy he could burst as the halls of McDuck Manor and Castle McDuck rang with blessed noise as the clan was finally fully restored and continuing to expand with each new addition.

Scrooge didn’t even realize he was sobbing until he choked on one sip of the foul brew.  He coughed harshly, stumbling into the office’s private bathroom to lean over the toilet bowl in case he was sick.  Somehow he kept it all down, but he stayed there for quite some time, eventually just staring up at the ceiling, leaning against the shower he’d had installed there for when he’d be at the Bin for days at a time and would use the office sofa for a bed.

He returned to his desk long enough to slowly finish off the rest of that second bottle, putting his head down on the hardwood surface as he waited to see if his body would attempt another rejection.  Only when he was satisfied did he enter the vault, climbing down the ladder rather than diving in.  He didn’t want to be sick in here, didn’t want to tarnish the memories below him with the concoction fermenting in his belly.

Once his feet touched the top layer of coins, Scrooge knelt down for a moment, raking his hands through them, before sinking down into the sea of memories.

Scrooge didn’t do money swims as much as he used to.  It wasn’t because he was getting older even though his body liked to remind him that he wasn’t a young man anymore at the most irritating times.  It was that once the joy had literally walked out of his life ten years ago, swimming in the vault became less pleasure and more pain.  He knew where every treasure kept in his Bin had come from, and a single touch of one always brought the memory associated with it back to his mind as clear as if it were happening before his eyes all over again.  When those treasures came from spending time with people he could no longer be with, it filled him with such a sense of bittersweet longing that it caused his old bones to ache all the more.

He’d once plunged into the shining depths of his Bin with joyful abandon, reveling in his memories even as his heart longed for people he couldn’t see anymore.  When Donald had left, taking Della’s eggs with him, Scrooge lost that heady sensation of pure happiness, and swimming in the Bin became an exercise in seeing how long he could endure the flood of precious memories.  His money swims became reminders of just what he’d lost as he searched for a happy memory to sustain him for just a little longer since so many people’s prosperity depended on him.  (Donald and the boys might be back in his life now, but the joy that brought was tainted by the knowledge that one little slip and they would be gone again, so Scrooge’s money swims hadn’t changed much since their return.)

Scrooge slipped through the coins, bills, and other treasures locked in his vault as deftly as a seal gliding through the ocean hunting for fish.  But unlike the seal which knew good places that almost always contained fat herring to fill its belly, the old man was searching for memories he knew weren’t there.  The little bits of money he’d treasured because they’d been in his pocket on days like his eldest child taking their first steps or his first grandchild hatching didn’t exist, but his fantasies urged him to find them, to search the entire Bin if he had to, in the hopes that he would find solid proof that those moments _had_ happened and his family just didn’t want to associate with him.  That would satisfy him because at least he’d know they were out there _somewhere_ and that he might one day be the kind of person they’d want to be around.

He swam for hours, periodically taking breaks to drink more of the alcohol before repeating the process of waiting to be sick (a few times he actually was), climbing back down the ladder, and searching again.  The four now-empty bottles on his desk were joined by more of their brethren that had been hidden away in the drawer, the only physical markers of just how much time had passed.

It took significant effort to haul his uncooperative body out of the vault the last time, nearly falling several times as he nearly let go of the ladder in his heavily-inebriated state.  Finally reaching the top, he stumbled his way out of the vault and over to the couch.  He slumped down onto it, lying flat on his back and placing one hand on his stomach as its contents sloshed unpleasantly about.  He’d put on a bit of water weight, but it would be gone by the next morning one way or another.  Very likely it would all end up in the trashcan he only vaguely remembered setting down beside the couch during one of his drinking breaks.

Just as expected, his hunt had been for nothing, but that was just another part of the ritual: the disappointment and despair that came from re-discovering what he already knew to be true.  As he stared up at the ceiling, hiccupping from all his tears and the effects of swallowing air with all that liquor, reality shattered the illusion he’d been so desperate to cling to.

Tomorrow morning long before the Bin opened he would take a shower and use the spare set of clothes he always kept at the Bin for when he stayed for long stretches of time.  He would empty out whatever the trashcan had caught and scrub it to make sure not a trance remained.  Then he would dispose of the bottles in the recyclables that the janitors had collected late Saturday and would dispose of when they first got in on Monday.  Deodorizing his current clothing and the air in the office to get rid of the last whiffs of the rotgut would finish off the ritual, erasing all evidence of it.

But for now, dreamless sleep beckoned him, and he eagerly dove into its empty embrace, glad to be rid of both fantasy and reality for a few hours.


End file.
